Novice Gloria LeLuia and Sister Rosetta Stone met up at Gloria’s house to manifest. There, Rosetta learned that Gloria’s landlord has a personal connection to one of the owners of the former Fritz, new Cathedral bar, and asked if he would be willing to intercede on the Sisters’ be half to get us there for the grand opening to deliver a blessing and help welcome the crowd to the new location. Meanwhile, Novice Tori D’Affair and Postulant Agnes Day met at Agnes’ house to manifest. All four joined in Rosetta’s mini nun bus in the luscious rain and headed over to Fisher Avenue in Brookline, with an on-time arrival.
There, we met up with the Valkyries vice president Luciano and a number of the New England Valkyries rugby players who were getting the space ready for the evening. Sister Amanda arrived in his secular role as one of the rugby players, and altered boy Sam arrived as a patron and to help the Sisters.
Once the Valkyries president Nick arrived, he gathered the rugby players to talk about the different fundraisers that were going on for the evening. The Sisters milled around with the early guests to make them feel comfortable, to find out their connections to the event, and to thank them for being there.
While the Sisters milled about early in the evening, Rosetta learned from Lu that just days before, Kiss 108 radio publicized the event as a weekend entertainment possibility. At that point there were approximately 80 tickets left to sell. This unsolicited publicity from the radio resulted in a completely sold out event with 200 tickets sold with a day to spare.
Once the event was under way, Nick gathered some of the rugby players and the Boston Sisters on the landing in the central stairway. There, he thanked the crowd for being present at the event, thanked Jonathan for opening up his home and for the generous catering, thanked the rugby players for pulling together for the event, and thanked the Boston Sisters for their support in being at the event.
He handed off the mic to Rosetta who announced what the rugby players were going to do to fundraise. There were six players who had pink buckets and they were dispersing amongst the crowd, asking for donations. At a certain interval in the evening the rugby player that raised the highest amount of funds would strip down to his jocks and socks and hang out with the crowd. Essentially, the patrons were going to announce their favored by virtue of giving him the greatest amount of money. There was also a raffle with the prize being a third of the funds raised going to the winner, a third of the funds going to the Valkyries, and the final third as a donation to the Boston Sisters’ Community Grant fund.
While the rugby members ran about to raise their funds, the Sisters continued to move within the crowd and talk to the folks, many people who were also interested in the Sisters themselves. Any photos that were taken by folks at the event were asked to please send a copy to the Sisters and business cards were handed out to help them do that.
Agnes approached Rosetta with an idea for the time we would announce the rugby player that raised the highest amount of money. The idea was that we would announce an improbable six-way tie, and that we would be looking for funds from the crowd to help us break that tie. Agnes ran the idea by Nick, who agreed and also by Lu, who also agreed.
At the appointed time of the announcements, we gathered with the rugby players who were slinging their buckets back onto the staircase and we announced this amazing six-way tie. We then invited the crowd who wanted to break the tie to throw extra dollars towards their player of choice. And boy, did they throw extra dollars at the rugby players–somewhere near $300 was raised in the span of just a few minutes, with these “bidders” expressing their intention of who they wanted to win with stacks of singles, tens, and twenties carefully placed within the shorts, teeth, and other areas of the rugby players raising funds.
It came down to two players who raised the highest amount, where we decided that both of them should have to strip down to their jocks and socks., Then, with the folks from the rugby team and the Sisters who were on the landing, while the crowd was enjoying the stripping-down, it was decided that all six of the rugby players who had raise some money would shuck their kits. The patrons were extremely appreciative of this gesture.
Before the raffle announcements were called, the rugby leaders conferenced and decided to not have the cash raffle be a third, a third, and a third; they decided to split the funds 50-50 with half going to the winner of the raffle and half being donated to the Boston Sisters’ Community Grant fund.
For the first time in a long time when we announced a raffle and pulled the ticket, we actually had a winner on the first pull. The raffle winner generously donated the funds back to the Valkyries whereupon the Valkyries donated it back to the Sisters, giving them a total of $371. Upon Nick’s inquiry, Rosetta requested that the Valkyries send a check from their treasury to the Sisters’ that we will deposit. The Boston Sisters should be seeing a check coming to them. Rosetta informed Nick and Lu that we were very grateful for the donation and the Sisters are looking forward to when they get their non-profit status so that we could we look at what we may be able do to help them then.
As the evening wound down the Sisters took a page from Eunice’s playbook and thanked folks as they were leaving for being at the event. This was particularly effective as the population of about 200 people made it easy for the Sisters to make connections and talk to almost every one of them.
Once the crowd was mostly gone, Tori’s shoes decided to explode at that point and she experienced what was meant by “end of your zipper”. We bundled the Sisters back into the car in the non-stop rain and headed home to our respective hovels.
Some personal thank you’s from Rosetta:
To Gloria for helping Rosetta with an emergency necklace repair.
To Tori and Agnes for being at the ready at time of pick up and helping us with a mildly complicated travel schedule, all to get to the location on time.
To Sam for his willingness to run short and quick errands as the Sisters needed them.
To Agnes for bringing up the idea to get that extra push in funds raised and for bringing it to an FPM’s attention as well as taking direction to get approval from the group’s leaders.
